Here's another show and tell. Part of my ongoing campaign to bring a little bit of order amidst the chaos is going through auction purchases to see what I bought. Today it was a box of over 150 plugs. I have no recollection of where I got it or what I paid, but if it was bought by me it wasn't much.

Of most interest to me are the eight pretty good late Champion X plugs. I also have a question. There are a few Champion 7 plugs with Ford on them. Are those for Model A? I don't know much about those modern cars.

In fact in 1911, Champion got a contract for X's which were standard equipment with Ford cars. Mosler & Company made plugs too that could be used in Ford cars. They got a contract in 1913, for a plug manufactured by them, but were made to the Champion blueprint at Ford's request.

To the untrained eye, they looked exactly alike unless you put them right side by side. But the way Champion and Ford worked, Ford got plugs at cost and the replacements from Champion ran as much as 75 cents each. If the average person had Moslers in their car, but never having seen the box they came in, that person could go to the store to get a replacement plug, describe what it looked like and 9 times out of 10 would probably get a Champion.

The cartons didn't look the same but the plugs did.

Champion sued Mosler for unfair business practices as to design, coloring, and packaging. Champion argued that since the Mosler looked like theirs, people would by them instead of the original equipment that came with the car.

The judges and Champion wanted the competition's plugs colored differently, but eventually only the shells were colored different. Everything else remained the same.

I have a set of Wards that look like Champion X's except the porcelain is a different shape on top.

Steve, you need to go over to the Smokstack website and build a spark plug tester from there plans to test all those. Ford coil, battery or maybe a charger, and stuff from around the shop. I run mine with an old moped battery, most popular invention out in the shop! Jim Derocher